By noon, the story had already changed three times.
In the east market, people said the Chen Family had endured enough and finally come to their senses. In the tea houses near the academy road, they said Bia Yuzhen had stood in the hall with a white face and could not say a word. At the weapon street, someone swore he had begged Chen Xianyi to stay and been refused in front of both families.
Not one of them had been there.
That had never stopped anyone in Mingzu City before.
The carriage rolled through the main street with the Bia Family emblem hanging plainly at its side. No one blocked the way. No one would be foolish enough to. Even so, the closer they came to the inner district, the slower the horses seemed to move, as if the city itself were lingering to look.
Inside the carriage, Bia Yuzhen sat with one hand braced against the window frame.
He had refused the sedan chair his grandmother suggested. He had refused the rear road back to the estate. He had refused, with a smile too slight to be called one, every attempt to make this easier.
Across from him sat Lin Suyue.
She did not ask whether he regretted going to the hall in person. She did not ask how badly he was hurting. The old woman simply looked at him once, saw the stiffness in his shoulders, and reached out to straighten the edge of his sleeve where it had folded in on itself.
The gesture was so ordinary that it nearly undid him.
"Grandmother," he said.
"Hm?"
"If I ask you not to have the market gossipers dragged out and punished, will you agree?"
She gave him a cool look. "That depends. Are you asking because you feel merciful, or because you don't want the city saying the Bia Family can't bear a few words?"
Yuzhen let out a breath through his nose. "The second one."
"I thought so."
The carriage slowed.
Even through the curtain, he could hear the market clearly now. Vendors calling. Wheels turning over stone. The quick rise and fall of voices that lowered only after noticing the Bia Family crest, then rose again the moment they thought themselves safe.
A man laughed somewhere to the left. "What did I say? A broken foundation is worse than a crippled path. At least with a crippled path, you can still dream."
"Shh. Do you want to die?"
"Die? For speaking the truth?"
Another voice joined in, eager and young. "I heard the Chen Family returned all the engagement gifts on the spot."
"No, no, you heard it wrong. It was the Bia Family that smashed the betrothal token."
"Impossible. If Bia Yuzhen still had that kind of pride, would he be hiding in a carriage?"
The driver snapped the reins once. The horses surged forward.
Lin Suyue's expression did not change, but the air in the carriage cooled a little.
Yuzhen looked out through the slight gap in the curtain. He could see only flashes—crowded stalls, robe hems, the red of candied fruit on a stick, a child balanced on a stone bench to peer over the heads of adults. Normal things. Market things. They should have felt distant from him. Somehow they did not.
That was the worst part.
Mingzu City had not changed at all.
Only the way it looked at him.
He let the curtain fall back into place.
The carriage reached the Bia estate not long after, but before it passed through the gates, another procession crossed the road ahead.
Blue robes. Silver-threaded hems. A carriage lacquered so carefully it nearly reflected the afternoon sun.
Xu Family.
The two convoys slowed in the middle of the street.
For one brief second, no one moved.
Then the door of the Xu carriage opened, and a young man stepped out without waiting for a servant's hand.
Xu Yansheng.
Sixteen. Late Qi Condensing. The most talked-about talent of the Xu Family's younger generation after Yuzhen's fall. Broad-shouldered already, handsome in the loud, obvious way people liked, and too confident by half. He stood in the street with one hand behind his back and glanced toward the Bia carriage as if he had merely stumbled across it by chance.
He had not.
Yuzhen saw that at once.
Lin Suyue clicked her tongue softly. "What poor luck."
"Is it?" Yuzhen asked.
The carriage door opened before she could answer.
A servant outside bowed. "Young Master, Young Mistress Xu asks whether the Bia Family requires the road."
Young Mistress Xu?
No. That was worse.
Yuzhen stepped down from the carriage himself.
The street went very still.
He could feel it happen, the way a hundred glances quietly sharpened the moment his boots touched stone. Some landed on his face. More on his waist, where no sword hung now. A few dipped lower, perhaps expecting to find traces of weakness written into the way he stood.
He gave them nothing.
Xu Yansheng looked him over in one quick sweep and smiled. "Young Master Bia."
"Young Master Xu."
"Bad day?"
Straight to it, then.
Yuzhen almost admired the lack of effort. "That depends. Were you hoping it was?"
A faint flicker passed through Xu Yansheng's eyes. Around them, several passersby abruptly found other things to do, though none of them went far enough not to hear.
"I heard what happened," Xu Yansheng said. "I thought perhaps you might not want to be seen outside for a while."
"Then your thoughtfulness is wasted."
A cough sounded from one of the Xu servants. Someone in the crowd failed to smother a laugh quickly enough.
Xu Yansheng's smile thinned.
Before he could speak again, another voice came from inside the Xu carriage, light and amused.
"Second Brother, if you stop blocking the road just to exchange pleasantries, people will think the Xu Family has too much free time."
The curtain was lifted from within by slender fingers. A girl leaned out, maybe fifteen or sixteen, her eyes bright with the sort of intelligence that made trouble look entertaining. Xu Qingli. Yuzhen knew her by sight. Most of Mingzu did.
Unlike her brother, she did not stare at him as if waiting for weakness to spill out. She looked once, directly, and then smiled as though he were simply himself.
"Young Master Bia," she greeted. "You look better than the rumors suggested."
"That sets a low bar," Yuzhen said.
That earned him the slightest upward tilt at the corner of her mouth.
Xu Yansheng frowned. "Qingli."
"What?" she asked. "I'm being polite. Aren't we all trying very hard to be polite?"
The silence that followed was almost pleasant.
Even Lin Suyue, still seated in the carriage, seemed less cold.
Xu Yansheng exhaled through his nose. "The road is wide enough. There's no need to make a scene."
That, from him.
Yuzhen inclined his head. "Then let's not."
He turned to step back into the carriage.
"Bia Yuzhen."
He stopped.
Xu Yansheng had called after him after all. Of course he had. Pride rarely knew when to stay quiet.
When Yuzhen looked back, the Xu heir's expression had shifted. It was not pity. Not quite mockery either. Something closer to challenge, though challenge from what position, Yuzhen wasn't sure.
"Cangyuan Sect enrollment is in less than three months," Xu Yansheng said. "I'll be going."
There was movement in the crowd again. Tiny. Hungry.
Yuzhen understood at once. This was not about concern. This was about being seen saying it.
"I know," he said.
Xu Yansheng waited.
And there it was. The real question, dressed up as nothing.
Will you?
Yuzhen looked at him for one heartbeat, then another.
"I'll see you there," he said.
This time the stillness on the street was complete.
Xu Qingli's brows lifted.
One of the market women nearly dropped the basket in her hands.
A Xu servant looked openly startled before catching himself.
Xu Yansheng stared at Yuzhen like he had misheard.
Yuzhen did not repeat himself.
He stepped back into the carriage, closed the door with his own hand, and sat down before anyone outside recovered enough to speak.
Only after the wheels started moving again did Lin Suyue turn toward him.
"You enjoy causing trouble," she said.
He rested his head lightly against the carriage wall. "No."
"Liar."
That almost pulled a smile out of him.
Outside, the street noise gradually returned, but it sounded different now. Less certain. Less bold. As if the story everyone had been telling all morning had been nudged slightly off its path.
He knew what they were thinking.
A broken foundation.
A discarded engagement.
A father trapped in a secret realm.
What exactly was left for Bia Yuzhen to do at Cangyuan Sect except embarrass himself?
Reasonable question.
He closed his eyes briefly.
Behind his ribs, spiritual energy moved where it should not have. Thin, jagged, unreliable. Every time he tried to gather more, it scattered before obeying. His meridians still ached on damp mornings. His dantian felt like cracked jade whenever he cultivated for too long.
No physician in Mingzu had lied to him.
His foundation was ruined.
But ruined was not the same as dead.
The carriage passed beneath the Bia gates.
As it rolled into the estate, a servant ran across the front courtyard so quickly he nearly slipped on the stone path. He caught himself, bowed hastily, and lifted his head with obvious agitation.
"Young Master," he said, breathless, "the Family Head has sent men to the northern market."
Lin Suyue's gaze sharpened. "For what?"
The servant swallowed. "Someone there was spreading words about you kneeling to the Chen Family."
Yuzhen opened his eyes.
"And?" Lin Suyue asked.
The servant hesitated. "The Family Head said… if they like talking so much, they can kneel in the square and talk to the paving stones instead."
For the first time that day, Yuzhen laughed.
It came out quieter than he expected, rough at the edges from disuse, but real.
Lin Suyue looked at him for a moment, then reached over and tapped his hand once.
"Remember that sound," she said.
Yuzhen looked at her.
"You'll need it," she added, and got out of the carriage.
He stayed where he was for a breath longer.
Beyond the courtyard, beyond the estate walls, Mingzu City was still talking. It would keep talking tomorrow. And the day after that. It would pick apart his ruined cultivation, his broken engagement, his father's absence, his face, his pride, whatever scraps it could reach.
Let it.
He lowered his gaze to his own palm.
The marks from his nails were still there, faint crescents against pale skin.
Three months.
If he could not even steady his breath under a few market whispers, what right did he have to say he would stand at the gates of Cangyuan Sect?
Outside, footsteps approached the carriage again.
A servant's voice, careful and low: "Young Master, there is… one more matter."
Yuzhen looked up. "What is it?"
The servant bowed deeper.
"The Chen Family has sent someone to return your betrothal jade."